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Introduction Dropbox has been around for a couple of years and they have done amazing things in that small amount of time. Notably their VoteBox system that enables you to vote on which ideas they work on nextGreat approach. You can choose from three versions: 1 free and 2 premium or pro accounts. The free version allocates 2 Gb wheras the Premium editions give you with 50 or 100 Gb. Backup and synchronizing are straightforward to setup and work non-stop in the background so it is a true “set it and forget it” solution. They additionally give the option for limitless file versioning as an add-on to the Premium editions. PDA devices are fully supported with apps for iPhone and iTouch and a website for online enabled devices. Collaboration features include public and private file and folder sharing and commenting on files and folders. There are more features in on the way. Photo albums and video streaming are currenty supported. A really nice touch is: If you follow their ‘getting started guide’ and complete 5 of the 6 steps you are rewarded with an extra 250Mb of storage! Brilliant! If you would like even more capacity, then invite friends and you get another 250Mb per referral up to a limit of 8Gb. Dropbox was setup by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and got seed funding from Y Combinator. Today, Dropbox is well-funded by Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Amidzad. After launching publicly in September of 2008, they have attracted over 3,000,000 customers and are growing quickly. They have been featured in magazines and on high profile technical websites, and have won awards from places like PC Magazine and CNET. Their passion is creating a service that really delivers and putting it in millions of people's hands. Security Options DropBox has adaquate security: The web portal is SSL encrypted with a requirement for a username and password to access your account. File transfers are protected with SSL encryption and once on their servers, your information is encrypted with 256 AES encryption. Also, this is managed by the Amazon AWS service which is backed by the Amazon name and quality stamp. Backup Options Non-stop and ‘Block Level’ backups are provided to make sure your files are frequently protected. Open files are backed up continually thanks to the use of 'Block level Incremental Backups' which means that DropBox only archives the sections of a file that have been edited, rather than the entire file. Including files and folders to the DropBox backup schedule is a snap: Just select the files you want to protect and choose 'backup with DropBox'. Alternative copies of files are stored so you can always get back an earlier edition of a file if you accidentally changed it. There is also a status indicator to show how the backup is progressing. Unfortunately network and removable drives cannot be included in backups and commercial databases like exchange and SQL server are not supported directly. File Sharing and Collaboration Files can be shared publicly – which allows everyone to browse them – or privately where you assign access rights to specific files and folders for each individual or group. Photo Albums are also supported and are sharable either publicly or privately. Comments can be attached to each file that is shared and users can be permitted to leave additional comments to create a discussion about a particular file or folder. Synchronization Synchronization is supported between different devices and between devices and the web portal. One very good feature is the LAN synchronization. This lets users on the same network (home or work) to quickly sync changes via the in-house network without going to the internet first. This greatly reduces your internet bandwidth overhead. Customer Support There is no phone, online chat or direct email customer support available. There are however, many other ways to get help available: You can contact support with a web form on their site; there is an extensive knowledgebase and FAQ section; the online doc is detailed to a practical level. There are also tutorials, a demo and case studies available. That said, by far the most useful resources for do-it-yourself support are the forum and blog. These are full of useful advice and support from both the DropBox staff and individuals using the service. Conclusion DropBox is really straightforward to configure and use. It offers almost all the features of a well thought out online storage solution: Backup, Web portal, multiple device syncing, file-versioning, online photo albums and file sharing. The only feature not yet available is integration with internet services to permit you to alter and create files directly in your DropBox. The pricing is reasonable yet there are better deals available if you require more storage than 100Gb. The security is very safe and the customer support is good, although the lack of phone, live chat and direct email support is a bit limiting. The forum and blog are excellent places to get your questions answered. If you need an all-round online storage solution then DropBox is an excellent choice.
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For more in-depth information on DropBox and other Online Storage Solutions visit the author's website: savvyITsolutions.com
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